He dismounted and tethered his horse to a post by the church. Then he walked onto the field. He saw her almost immediately, on her knees beside a prone body. She had lost her hat and her hair was escaping from its pins. It threw off the sun's radiance in a luminous glory of luster and color that was almost shocking against the grimness of the scene.
"Chloe!" He yelled her name across the space that separated them, his knees abruptly weakening with relief.
She looked up, then scrambled to her feet and ran toward him. "Oh, Hugo!" She fell into his arms, clutching him around the waist with fierce need in a gesture that flooded him with memories to stir his body and set his blood racing.
She was crying and her eyes were like drowned cornflowers.
"Are you hurt?" he demanded roughly.
She shook her head. "No… no, not really… but I'm so angry. How could they have done such a thing? What possible justification? It was the most terrible… terrible… wicked thing, Hugo." Her voice caught on a gulping sob.
"Hush." He stroked her hair and pulled out his handkerchief. "Dry your eyes… and your nose is running." He mopped the tears and wiped her nose with a briskness that concealed his emotion and enabled him to see her as he wanted to see her-a distressed child in need of comfort.
"I've lost my hat," she said with forlorn irrelevance.
"There are other hats."
"But I was most particularly fond of that one." She looked around the field and said with another cry of outrage, "Why? Why would they do such a thing?"
"Fear," he said quietly. "France has taught the power of the mob. They're terrified of a popular uprising."
"I'd guillotine the lot of them," she said fiercely. "And knit while their heads fell into the basket… except that I can't knit." Her eyes filled with tears again and abruptly she sat on the ground.
"What is it7" Alarmed, Hugo bent over her.
"I don't know," she said. "My legs are shaking. Perhaps it's because I haven't had anything to eat all day except for an apple."
Hugo lifted her to her feet, sure that rather more than her customary complaint of hunger lay behind the sudden faintness. However, satisfying such a basic need
might help to distance the afternoon's honor for her. "That's easily remedied." He took her hand. "There's nothing more you can do here."
Chloe glanced around the field. The citizens of Manchester were looking after their own, the field slowly clearing as the wounded were carried off by friends and family.
The anger still burned, but it was true she wasn't needed. Her own concerns could come to the forefront now.
"Crispin was supposed to bring a picnic… Oh, I have to tell you about Crispin." She sniffed and wiped her nose with the back of her free hand as Hugo led her off the field.
"I already know." He handed her back his handkerchief.
"How?" She blew her nose vigorously and offered him the crumpled ball.
"Keep it," he said. "I came across him and he was… uh, induced, shall we say, to tell me that you had left him in some haste. He affected not to know why."
"There was a post-chaise and I had the strangest feeling they were going to force-induced?" She looked up at him, momentarily diverted. "Did you hurt him?"
"Not much."
"I wish you had."
For such a healing soul and champion of the underdog, she could be remarkably ruthless, Hugo thought. "Crispin is just obeying your half brother," he told her. "like the men the other night. I've known that all along, and I don't believe in wreaking vengeance on minions."
"The men the other night'" Chloe stopped and turned to look up at him. "You mean… they wanted me, not Dante?"
Hugo's lips curved a fraction at her astonishment. "Strange as it may seem to you, lass, I believe that you're
rather more valuable a prize than that mongrel… -not that I'm casting aspersions on Dante's lineage, you understand… but…"
The teasing remark lifted the shadows somewhat on the somber countenance. "What would they want with me?"
"You're a wealthy young woman. Jasper would like to keep your fortune in the family."
"By marrying me to Crispin," she asserted. She kicked at a loose pebble, her mouth hardening. "He can't force me to marry him?"
"No, not if I have a say in the matter," Hugo agreed calmly. "But if he got his hands on you, he'd have a damn good try."
Chloe absorbed this in silence. They reached the garden where she'd left Maid Marion and she withdrew her hand from Hugo's.
"Where are you going?"
"To fetch my horse… or, rather, Jasper's horse. You didn't think I was riding Dapple, did you?"
Hugo realized he hadn't given the matter any thought. And when he saw the animal she led over, he whistled in admiration. "Beautiful lines."
"Yes, she's out of Red Queen by Sherrif… I know the stallion but not the dam. Sherrif s the pride of Jasper's stud." She stroked the mare's neck. "She's highly strung, but she seems quieter now."
Hugo frowned. "She'll have to be returned to Shipton."
"I told Crispin to tell Jasper I couldn't accept her as a gift, but I would purchase her," Chloe informed him.
"Oh, did you now?" He raised his eyebrows. It seemed an appropriate juncture to initiate the new regime and assert his seriously diminished authority with his headstrong ward. "And just who gave you permission to make such a major decision? Permit me to re-
mind you, Miss Gresham, that your fortune is in my control and I will decide how it's to be spent."
"But that's silly when we both know this horse is a good buy and I don't-"
Hugo silenced her with a raised forefinger. "You may not be aware of it, young Chloe, but you are already in a good deal of very hot water. I shouldn't compound your position if I were you. You've enough explaining to do as it is."
Chloe bit her lip. "I didn't think you'd be vexed after what's happened here."
"What happened here has nothing to do with how and why you happen to be in the middle of it." He caught her waist and lifted her onto the mare. "We'll discuss it in the quiet of Girton's Coffee House."
"But I did leave you a note so you wouldn't be worried," she ventured as he mounted his own horse.
"I will take that into account," he said. "But how much it will weigh against my having to leap from my bed and chase after you without so much as a mouthful of coffee or a moment to shave, I don't know."
It didn't sound too promising to Chloe. She cast him a sideways glance. He did look uncomfortably in need of hot water and a razor. "I did save myself," she pointed out.
"If you'd done as you were told, it wouldn't have been necessary."
Chloe lapsed into a somewhat apprehensive silence.
Girton's Coffee House was empty of custom. The entire city seemed to be in shock, people gathered in dazed knots on street corners or huddled in doorways. Mr. Lampton greeted his guests without ceremony, asking immediately if they'd been at St. Peter's Fields. Hugo told him what he knew.
"Eh, but it's 'ard to credit," Lampton said, shaking his
head. "It'll set the cat among the pigeons, you mark my words."
"They've arrested the orator." A man appeared in the doorway, his face drawn, a cudgel in his hand. "Folks is gatherin' at the Mitre." Announcement made, he vanished to stop at other doors down the street.
"Not me," Lampton said, shaking his head again. "There's trouble enow. What can I get for you folk?"
"A pot of chocolate for the lady, coffee for myself, and whatever you can provide in the way of nuncheon," Hugo readily informed him.
A tureen of potato soup and a cold chicken appeared in short order, and Hugo waited until they'd both satisfied their hunger. Then he leaned back in his chair, crossing one booted leg over the other, and bent a stern eye on his ward.
"Well?" he said.